This document discusses three types of machine learning: unsupervised learning, reinforcement learning, and supervised learning. It provides details on unsupervised learning techniques like clustering and association analysis. It then explains reinforcement learning using the example of a baby learning to walk, noting that reinforcement learning involves an agent learning a task through trial and error with environmental rewards and punishments. Finally, it compares the three machine learning techniques.
1. Unit 1 Lecture 4
• Unsupervised learning
• Reinforcement learning
• Comparison – supervised , unsupervised and
reinforcement learning
2. Unsupervised learning
• In unsupervised learning, there is no labeled training data to learn
from and no prediction to be made.
• In unsupervised learning, the objective is to take a dataset as input and
try to find natural groupings or patterns within the data elements or
records.
• Therefore, unsupervised learning is often termed as descriptive model
and the process of unsupervised learning is referred as pattern
discovery or knowledge discovery.
• One critical application of unsupervised learning is customer
segmentation.
• Clustering is the main type of unsupervised learning.
• It intends to group or organize similar objects together.
• For that reason, objects belonging to the same cluster are quite similar
to each Other while objects belonging to different clusters are quite
dissimilar.
3. • Hence, the objective of clustering to discover the intrinsic grouping of
unlabelled data and form clusters, as depicted in Figure in next slide.
• Different measures of similarity can be applied for clustering.
• One of the most commonly adopted similarity measure is distance.
• Two data items are considered as a part of the same cluster if the
distance between them is less.
• In the same way, if the distance between the data items is high, the
items do not generally belong to the same cluster.
• This is also known as distance-based clustering.
• Figure in slide 5 depicts the process of clustering at a high level.
• Other than clustering of data and getting a summarized view from it,
one more variant of unsupervised learning is association analysis.
• As a part of association analysis, the association between data
elements is identified.
6. • Let's try to understand the approach of association analysis in context
of one of the most common examples, i.e. market basket analysis as
shown in Figure in next slide.
• From past transaction data in a grocery store, it may be observed that
most of the customers who have bought item A , have also bought item
B and item C or at least one of them.
• It means that there is a strong association of the event 'purchase of
item ‘A' with the event 'purchase of item ‘B’ or 'purchase of item ‘C’.
• Identifying these sorts of associations is the goal of association
analysis.
• This helps in boosting up sales pipeline, hence a critical input for the
sales group.
• Critical applications of association analysis include market basket
analysis and recommender systems.
8. Reinforcement learning
• We have seen babies learn to walk without any prior knowledge of how
to do it.
• Often we wonder how they really do it.
• They do it in a relatively simple way.
• First they notice somebody else walking around, for example parents
or anyone living around.
• They understand that legs have to be used, one at a time, to take a step.
• While walking, sometimes they fall down hitting an obstacle, whereas
other times they are able to walk smoothly avoiding bumpy obstacles.
• When they are able to walk overcoming the obstacle, their parents are
elated and appreciate the baby with loud claps / or may be a
chocolates.
• When they fall down while circumventing an obstacle, obviously their
Parents do not give claps or chocolates.
9. • Slowly a time comes when the babies learn from mistakes and are able
to walk with much ease.
• In the same way, machines often learn to do tasks autonomously.
• Let's try to understand in context of the example of the child learning
to walk.
• The action tried to be achieved is walking, the child is the agent and the
place with hurdles on which the child is trying to walk resembles the
environment.
• It tries to improve its performance of doing the task.
• When a sub-task is accomplished successfully, a reward is given.
• When a sub-task is not executed correctly, obviously no reward is
given.
• This continues till the machine is able to complete execution of the
whole task.
10. • This process of learning is known as reinforcement learning.
• Figure captures the high-level process of reinforcement learning.
11. • One contemporary example of reinforcement learning is self-driving
cars.
• The critical information which it needs to take care of are speed and
speed limit in different road segments, traffic conditions, road
conditions, weather conditions, etc.
• The tasks that have to be taken care of are start/stop, accelerate/
decelerate, turn to left/right, etc.
• Reinforcement learning is getting more and more attention from both
industry learning and academia. Annual publications count in the area of
reinforcement in Google Scholar support this view.
• AlphaGo used RL to defeat the best human Go player.
• RL is an effective tool for personalized online marketing. It considers the
demo-graphic details and browsing history of the user real-time to show
most relevant advertisements.